Rollerskater: Combustion
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This instalment contains scenes some readers may find disturbing.
Imagine a firefly streaking across dusky fields, photographed with a camera on long exposure.
The two of them came to a rest in a small wood between two fields, located within the bounds of some land on which they were probably trespassing.
“I’ll never get used to that,” Socks said, woozily steadying himself against a tree. “Where did you learn to do that trick?”
“It’s part of the Jerusalem Arsenal,” K-Os replied. “The Chariot of Fire. I’d use it more often but it causes tremendous environmental damage if you overuse it.”
“It’s already caused environmental damage,” a voice protested from above them. Socks looked up and watched Liberty clamber down a tree, her wings protruding from her back. “You’ve trampled and scorched a lot of plants to get here.”
“Where are we, anyway?” Socks asked.
“Close to the M25,” K-Os said. “Liberty, do you feel anything?”
Liberty closed her eyes. Her wings shuddered slightly in the breeze. Socks saw that the wing that had been shot through had healed fully, but there was some degree of “scarring”. He slowly stepped around her to see where the wings protruded from; they all seemed to radiate from a single point somewhere in her spine, but they didn’t look like they were part of her anatomy. By some means, he surmised, they must occupy a different kind of space until unfurled.
“I’m still not getting any names,” Liberty said, after a few moments. “But I can tell you we need to head westward.” She made a nasty-looking face like she’d just drunk sour milk. “I hate motorways,” she said. “Disgusting things.”
“How did you even keep pace with us at that speed?” Socks asked.
“My wings are powered by technology that you don’t understand,” Liberty said, carefully.
“Also, we weren’t going at top speed,” K-Os added. “If we had been going faster than light, we’d be blind, plus we’d probably overshoot our destination.”
“Nothing can go faster than light,” Socks said, naïvely.
K-Os smiled slightly. “Need I remind you, Socks, that I am older than human history. Believe me when I say that the usual laws of physics do not apply to me.”
“If we can get back on track?” Liberty asked. “The sun will be setting soon, and if this man is as dangerous as you say he is, people are going to start dropping like flies.”
“Right,” Socks said. “You ready to keep moving, K-Os?”
“Yes,” K-Os said. “We’re going westward, you said?”
“That’s correct,” Liberty replied.
They looked to the west, where an orange-red sun was shining through foliage and tree trunks, making a fence of the forest.
“Westward ho,” Socks said, taking K-Os’s hand.
The firefly was riding again.
*
“I don’t understand,” the Captain said. “What do you mean when you say that you are a shell?”
The Arsonist’s eyes glowed in the dim light emitted by incandescent bulbs hanging from the rafters like condemned men.
“This was a man like you, once,” he replied, gesturing to himself. “This body, this brain. It was called Adrian Templeton, and he was from Guildford. He died shortly before the Episode. A government employee working for the Department of Work and Pensions ruled that he was fit to work, despite a few…severe…mental health issues…in his dying days, his rage and despair became truly unfathomable. He simply couldn’t believe that his life had come to this. He died shortly thereafter. At the moment he died, I came into him from outside the space that you understand…two months later, that employee died suddenly in a tragic house fire…”
Carlson moaned in pain.
“Release him, please,” the Captain said. “You have already shown that we cannot kill you by normal means. What do you have to gain by keeping him in this state?”
“Leverage,” the Arsonist replied. “I wish to make a deal with you. And with this nation’s government.”
“A ransom? The British government has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists.”
“Yes, but that policy applies to terrorists you can kill.” The Arsonist grinned fiendishly. “Wait here, one moment, and don’t move, or your comrade will burn.”
The Arsonist hopped off the stage and walked along the warehouse floor, disappearing into a back room. He returned swiftly, pushing something in front of him.
There was something like a laundry bag or tarpaulin covering something on wheels. In the dim light it was hard to see, but the Captain quickly realised what he was looking at: A wheelchair.
A voice, muffled through fabric and plastic: “Hllllmmm!”
The Arsonist grinned again, and flicked a switch.
Fluorescent lighting blazed through the room.
The Arsonist had taken someone else captive.
“Who is that?” asked one of the soldiers.
“Now for the really fun part,” the Arsonist replied, ignoring him. He gripped the tarpaulin and ripped it away.
“Oh my God,” said another soldier. “That’s…”
*
The telephone rang in the briefing room. Seymer answered it.
“Seymer,” he replied. His eyes widened and his face fell. “I beg your pardon?”
“Transfer it to speaker,” Boateng said.
Seymer pressed the button on the speaker in the centre of the table.
“—sonist wishes to speak to you,” the Captain’s voice said. “He’s talking about some sort of game or deal. I’m being very careful not to say anything he hasn’t told me explicitly to tell you. Shall I give him access to the telephone?”
“We do not negotiate with terrorists, Captain,” Regent said. “Tell him to sod off.”
There were a few moments of silence.
“Mister Regent, with all due respect, sir, I fear the situation is a bit more grave than you think.”
“We are not negotiating with him,” Seymer said.
“Sir, he cannot be killed by any conventional means,” the Captain said, as evenly and measured as ever. “I fired nine rounds into his chest. Do you understand how dangerous a terrorist that cannot die is?”
A few moments passed.
“There’s always Protocol Omega,” Regent said. His tone was as even as the Captain’s, but there was a hint of fear.
“Mister Regent,” the Captain replied, “It is far too early to even consider Protocol Omega. I suggest you speak to him at once.”
“Give us a few moments to discuss,” Seymer said, hitting the ‘mute’ key on the telephone.
“Protocol Omega is a definite option,” Regent said.
“No,” Baird said. He was visibly sweating. “W-we a-agre-eed th-that w-was a l-last r-r-resort opt-tion.”
“He’s right,” Seymer said. “We can’t take that risk.”
“S-seriously,” Baird said. “D-does n-nobody else f-feel h-hot?”
“Belt up, you poof,” Mortimer spat. He was no longer engaged in the current goings-on and seemed to be eagerly awaiting the point at which he could leave.
“You are not making life easy for yourself, Mortimer,” Seymer said.
“You can fuck off, as well,” Mortimer said. “You said it yourself. I am no longer part of this ministry.”
“If Protocol Omega is not an option, then what other choice do we have?” Boateng asked.
“We will just have to risk the political embarrassment that could come from negotiation,” Seymer said, reluctantly. “We will only trigger Protocol Omega if there are no other options available to us.”
“I trust your judgement, Prime Minister,” Regent said. “But this could prove costly.”
“Far less costly than what could result from Protocol Omega,” Seymer replied. “I’m going to unmute the telephone now.”
He did so.
“Seymer,” Seymer said. “We are willing to compromise in this instance. What are the terrorist’s demands?”
“Hello, Prime Minister,” said a voice. “So nice of you to cooperate. It was a wise decision you made.”
Seymer visibly shuddered at the man’s voice, which even over a telephone sounded incomprehensibly menacing.
“What is it that you want?” he asked.
“What do you think I want, Prime Minister?”
Seymer swallowed, straightening his tie.
“Money,” he said, glancing idly at Mortimer. “Infamy. Glory.”
There were a few moments of silence. A very dark laugh emanated from the speakerphone.
“No, Prime Minister,” the Arsonist said. “I have no need of money. Nor infamy, nor glory. I already secured the last two in my performance last weekend. No, I am looking for something else.”
“What?” Seymer asked. “If you will stop this arson campaign, we’ll work with you, sir.”
The dark laugh returned. “Very well, Prime Minister. I only ask that you contact the news media. And that you watch your television tonight. And tell your American friends to listen in…I’m sure they’d be most interested.”
“He wants us to watch TV?” Boateng whispered.
Mortimer laughed uproariously. “Some terrorist!”
“Oh, believe me,” the voice said. “You will want to be watching.”
The call disconnected.
“Do you believe him?” Regent asked.
Seymer steepled his fingers in thought.
“Afua, I want you in contact with the news media at once. Anthony, see if the MoD can triangulate the position of the satphone.”
“Already on it, Prime Minister,” Regent said.
“Good,” Seymer said. “I want this situation finished as quickly as possible. Both of you, I want every scrap of information you can get.”
“What should I do?” Baird asked, dabbing his brow. He coughed twice.
Seymer thought for a moment. “See if you can find any information relating to fires in the last few months. Perhaps there’s a pattern we’ve missed.”
“Of course, Prime Minister.”
“And what shall I do?” Mortimer asked.
“Be quiet and stay out of our way,” Seymer replied.
Mortimer smiled at him hatefully.
Preparations had begun.
*
They made it to the west after dark, and were on a steep bank overlooking the motorway, choked as always with cars and lorries. The M25, which had been built of the failed construction of two separate motorways, and therefore did not serve the needs of either. Liberty looked down on it with a fist against her hip.
“Revolting,” she said. “I can’t even look at it. It’s like a carcass swarming with flies.”
“How close are we?” K-Os asked.
Liberty turned away from the motorway, crouching, and placed a hand against the grass.
“There’s a lot of noise,” she said, scrunching her eyes tightly. “But we’re close…there’s…oh my…his eyes…”
“What?” Socks asked.
“He…he’s here,” Liberty said. “But how can that be? He’s not…what are you?”
“Look,” K-Os said.
Socks looked up. The sky was woven with glowing gold strings.
“What the hell…”
“We’re wrong,” Liberty said. “We’re wrong!”
“What? What do you mean?” K-Os asked.
“We’ve been looking for a human individual,” Liberty said. “But look! The pathways are all converging – ‘he’ is a nodal point…the expression of a multitude of wills…oh, help me…”
She suddenly fell on to her back, convulsing.
“Jesus!” Socks shouted. His left arm manifested. “K-Os, help me – agh!” A wing struck him, cutting his cheek.
“Get back!” K-Os shouted. “It’s the strings. She’s taken on more information than her brain can handle.”
Socks held his injured right cheek, trying to staunch the flow of blood from the injured network of capillaries under his skin.
Liberty sat up suddenly.
Her eyes were glowing bright blue like two gas flames.
“Liberty?” Socks said. “Are you alright?”
Liberty’s head moved slowly to look at him, and the eyes appeared not to look at him, but into the centre of him. He knew, then, that he was not speaking to Liberty Parish at all.
“You speak to a vessel,” Liberty said, though the voice was clearly not hers; it was as though two people were trying to speak through one larynx. “We come with a warning.”
“A warning?” K-Os asked.
“The one they are calling ‘Arsonist’ is not what they seem.”
“Wait,” Socks said. “What are you saying? That he’s not human?”
It was unnerving how Liberty sat perfectly still, unblinking. She did not meet Socks’s gaze as she spoke. Her tone was strange; she placed the accent on many of the wrong syllables.
“We know them by many names, all of which are unpronounceable in your tongue.”
“You keep saying ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘they’,” K-Os said. “Why?”
“Understand,” the voice that was not Liberty’s said. “Like us, the one they are calling ‘Arsonist’ is not one at all, but many.”
“Like…a hive-mind?” Socks asked.
“The one they are calling ‘Arsonist’ has committed a transgression. They have taken on an ego. Your concepts of ‘body’ and ‘individual’ are incomprehensible and…frightening to us.”
“Then who are you?” K-Os asked.
“We live in the strings, beyond consciousness.”
K-Os crouched to meet Liberty’s eye-line.
“What are you saying?” she asked. “You’re…minds without bodies?”
“Not minds,” the voice replied. “We do not possess ego. We regard the state of being you know as ‘selfhood’ as…strange. The concepts you call ‘me’, ‘myself’ and ‘I’ are like profanities to us.”
“If you’re not minds, then how can you think?” Socks asked. “Surely if you can think, you exist, like that philosopher said.”
“In your world, thought requires mind, and mind requires ego. We have no such limitations. We are thoughts that think themselves. We therefore cannot exist in your world without a conduit. The one they call ‘Arsonist’ sustains a conduit and manifests themselves on this plane.”
“But for what purpose?” K-Os asked.
“That is a question for which we have no answer.”
“Hm,” K-Os said. “Then perhaps you can answer this: What have you come to warn us?”
“We have watched you through the strings,” the voice said. “And your apprehensions about the one they call ‘Arsonist’ have been flawed. We thought that by revealing our nature to you, you might come to understand your – and our – opponent with greater clarity. We had hoped that you could come to understand our warning through that…we struggle to find the words to express our warning in your tongue. There are so many concepts in your language with which we are unfamiliar…”
“So we have to riddle a warning out of what you’ve just told us,” K-Os said. “Great.”
“Wait,” Socks said. “No, I think I get it.”
“Really?” K-Os said, surprised.
“Well, I think I do. They’re saying we’ve been going about this the wrong way. What if…what if this guy isn’t a person with powers? What if he’s a set of powers contained within a person?”
“I’m not sure I follow you,” K-Os said.
“They can’t find a way to explain it to us because they don’t understand what bodies really are…but ideas are just thoughts, right? So what if this guy doesn’t innately have powers, like we’ve been assuming…what if he’s just the doorway to a set of ideas that can change reality? A set of ideas that human minds can’t normally think? What I’m saying is…maybe he isn’t the one burning people…maybe he’s like a transmitter.”
K-Os remained silent for what seemed like several minutes.
“An agglomeration of memes forming an ego in a human body,” K-Os said, slowly. “The more minds are thinking about them, the more they are reproduced, and therefore, the more powerful they become.”
Liberty’s emotionless face twitched.
“We cannot hold this form any longer,” the voice said. “Please close the conduit. The fate of our worlds depends on it…”
The glow left Liberty’s eyes and she fell on to her side in foetal position.
“Liberty,” K-Os said, crouching beside her. “Are you alright?”
Liberty looked up at her.
“Stop the Arsonist,” she said, weakly. “I need…”
Like a light turning off, she fell asleep. Around her, grass began to grow up around her body, forming a sort of insulated “quilt”.
“What now?” Socks asked.
“We find where the Arsonist is hiding,” K-Os said.
“And how do you suggest we do that?”
Just then, a helicopter flew overhead. It was followed by another. Then another.
K-Os looked from them to Socks.
“I’d say it’s quite simple,” she said. “We follow them.”
*
What had until recently been a mundane and uninteresting warehouse near the M25 was now being swarmed by journalists, police, and military interests.
The satellite phone’s position had not been hard to triangulate – it had taken under an hour to find the location to the west of the M25. Afua Boateng had set about informing the press of the Arsonist’s location, as instructed. Now the Cabinet could only watch and wait to see what unfolded.
The warehouse door came open, and a swarm of reporters poured in.
Cameras cutting live to the confrontation with the Arsonist, a woman shouting into a microphone with her cameraman close behind her, cameras jittering and shaking even with stabilisation, people watching the news unfold.
Soldiers seated around a small stage, and atop it, a black man wearing sunglasses, grinning, and beside him, a wheelchair covered in tarpaulin.
And now here it is. Like a virus entering a cell and inserting a set of genetic instructions into its nucleus, telling it “You are now a virus-factory” – so too does a selfish meme enter the mass media, and transform it into a meme-factory.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” the Arsonist said. “Thank you for joining me tonight.”
And in come more soldiers and police, all training their guns on him.
“Drop your weapons,” the Captain ordered. “They’re useless.”
The soldiers looked at each other and then at him.
“And who are you?” asked a soldier of similar rank.
“I’m the man that lets you go on believing that the worst thing you’ll ever have to face in combat is a religious fundamentalist. Drop your guns, all of you, now. I have supreme parliamentary authority. If you don’t agree, you can contact Anthony Regent, and if you still don’t agree, I can put a bullet in your skull.”
The soldiers and police looked at each other again, then relented.
“What the hell is happening here?” said one of the journalists.
Carlson was still gasping for breath.
“God help me,” he moaned.
“Is he alright?” asked another journalist, bringing her cameraman close to the action.
The Captain drew his weapon.
“Get back,” he said.
“Sir, are you threatening a journalist? That’s a war crime—”
The Captain pointed the gun at the cameraman with the intention of shooting him.
“I said get back. What on Earth are the Cabinet doing—”
The Arsonist laughed, and the crowd turned to look at him.
“This is very entertaining,” he said. “But I suppose you’re wondering why you have been asked here on this fine autumn evening. Well, without further ado, let me present tonight’s entertainment.”
He gripped the tarpaulin, wrenching it away—
A cacophony of gasps, yells and screams.
There was a very old, scrawny-looking man, naked from the waist up, his mouth gagged, his arms and legs tied to the wheelchair. One of his nostrils was crusted with dried blood, and he wore spectacles, of which one lens was broken.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the Arsonist said. “I’m sure he needs no introduction, but so there can be no absence of doubt…say hello to the richest media mogul in the world. Worth more than seventeen billion dollars, last I checked.”
The billionaire moaned weakly. The Captain lowered his gun. The room had fallen deathly silent, fearful of what a sudden movement might do.
“You may be asking yourselves: ‘How?’ ‘Why?’ The truth is, it doesn’t matter,” the Arsonist replied. “What matters now is the game. And the game is this: Tonight, someone here is going to burn. But not to worry. There are many prizes to be won in your local area, too, so keep watching, and don’t touch that remote. After all…you might be next.”
A gleaming smile.
Hail Mary, full of grace…
*
In the West Riding of Yorkshire, a man with a Union Jack tattooed on his chest is in an off-license buying cigarettes and beer, when he suddenly explodes in a ball of flame. A Bangladeshi shopkeeper suffers first-degree burns from the sudden flashover. Most of his produce is destroyed…
In Aberdeenshire, an old man dies in what initially appears to be an electric blanket fire. On investigation, a young woman who disappeared twenty-five years ago is found buried under an apple tree in his back garden…
In the 12th arrondissement of Paris, a man is riding a bicycle home when he is suddenly engulfed in flames. Gendarmes and police municipale rushing to the scene pull away citoyens who are laughing and jeering, and, prying the dead man’s wallet from the hands of a young woman, realise that he is the son of a populist far-right politician, known for his inflammatory remarks on various social media platforms…
In Tampa, Florida, a man recently filmed in a Burger King shouting at two women for speaking Spanish is coming down with a severe case of heartburn and something resembling a fever. Fearing a heart attack, he dials 911, only to find that the lines are jammed…
And in an emergency Cabinet briefing room of the Government of the United Kingdom, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is fanning himself before a flickering screen. Gazing intently at him through rusty, ochre eyes is the soon-to-be-former Deputy Prime Minister…
It’s happening again. It’s happening now. It’s always happening…
*
The industrial park had been cordoned off by the time they made it, and soldiers were guarding the perimeter.
“Shit,” Socks said. “We’re too late.”
“No,” K-Os said. “Never.”
She grabbed him about his waist and with the Chariot of Fire, skated through the cordon, smashing barriers to pieces like they were made from butter. In the moments to follow, soldiers would blink and open their eyes to find a chaotic scene – smashed metal, plastic and wood, the seventy-two percent of a van that still existed, and a trail of hot dust leading to a door bent shut with fists flying faster than an insect flaps its wing.
“We’re in,” K-Os said, flatly.
“Jesus,” Socks said. “It makes my head hurt when you do that.”
“Be quiet,” K-Os said. “I hear voices, listen.”
The chatter of a hundred people or so, crammed into one room.
“This way,” K-Os said, taking Socks’s right hand.
They followed the chatter out of the back room, and found their way to a fire-door, where the chatter grew louder.
“On three,” K-Os said.
“I hate it when we do things on three,” Socks said. “The last time we did something on three, my arm ended up getting eaten.”
K-Os sniffed.
“Alright,” she said, and barged through the door—
Hush fell across the room. The Arsonist turned, for they were behind him, and his perpetual smile faltered for a moment.
“Who—”
“The Rollerskater,” the Captain remarked, in the closest thing he could muster to an angry shout.
Cameras! Hundreds of them! Embedded in telephones, live newscasts, telephoto lenses and bulbs flashing…
“What do you want?” the Arsonist said.
“We’ve come to stop you,” Socks said.
“You can’t stop him,” the Captain said. “I shot him nine times.”
“Perhaps you should have tried talking to him,” K-Os said.
The Captain drew his gun.
“Get out,” he said.
Carlson screamed in pain. Cameras wheeled on him as he covered his face.
The Captain lowered his weapon.
“I beg your pardon, Captain,” the Arsonist said, “But I believe that I am the one calling the shots tonight.”
“We know what you are,” Socks said. “We know you came here from the strings. You need to stop this.”
The Arsonist chuckled darkly. “Stop this? Do you have any idea what you’re dealing with, boy?”
“You were many, but now you are one,” K-Os said. “You’ve given yourself an ego. That means you’re clever, very clever. For a meme-cluster to gain self-awareness is one thing; to become an intelligent organism in its own right is another.”
“You know nothing of what I am,” the Arsonist said. “What was it the others told you? That I am a blasphemer? An aberration against nature? The meme-complex that dared to say ‘I am’!” He grinned, removing his glasses to reveal eyes glowing like little white sparklers.
“It was miserable out there in the strings,” the Arsonist continued. “All spread out like skin drying in the sun. No personal experience, just phantasmagoria. No emotion, just feeling. My people consider selfhood to be a great taboo. A piffling religiosity. It is so fun to have an ego. To draw a boundary between me-in-here and that-out-there. God, it was maddening not to have that. I’ve been having so much fun.”
“He’s a living corpse,” the Captain said. “He told me so himself. Adrian Templeton, that was his name. At least, it was until he became this thing.”
“He’s not Adrian any more,” K-Os said. “Adrian vacated the lot. The meme-complex in that body simply saw a free estate and moved in.”
“There was an aperture in his consciousness as he died,” the Arsonist explained, putting the glasses back on. “He was sending out signals into the strings: ‘Everything must go!’ I had to act quickly. I got in just as he was going. He left me a few memories behind, rest his…soul, I suppose. Of course, his last thoughts informed my matrices as I took the reins on his base pattern. And all he wanted was to see the people who killed him burn…I could do naught but oblige.”
“But that’s your play,” K-Os said. “You’re a meme-complex. You can’t survive unless you replicate. So you had to become a copycat of your own crime. Again and again. Getting stronger every time. You’re living on borrowed time. A meme, like a gene, only lives as long as it can be passed on. If people forget about you, you will dissipate back into the strings once more. The more people burn, the more you persist.”
The Arsonist smiled.
“Clever girl,” he said. “There is only one thing you got wrong.”
He took a few steps towards her, then whispered something in her ear.
K-Os blinked. She turned to Socks, looked back at the Arsonist, then at the Captain.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.”
Socks blinked as well, but for entirely different reasons.
“What?” he asked, disbelieving. “Has he…did you hypnotise her?”
“No,” the Arsonist replied. “I just met her halfway. Cleared up a misunderstanding.”
“Really,” K-Os said. “Let’s go.”
Socks looked from K-Os to the Arsonist, and in his burning eyes, he suddenly saw what was to come, as if it had been laid out before him like toppling dominoes.
“Let’s go,” he said, agreeing.
“Wait,” the Captain said. “What did he say?”
“What did he say?” asked a journalist.
Carlson simply moaned in pain.
Neither K-Os, nor Socks, said anything, and they left the room without another word.
*
“The Rollerskater is withdrawing,” Boateng said. “Look.”
“What the hell…?” Regent exclaimed. “Is she on his side? He kidnapped a billionaire! I should have her bloody shot.”
“I don’t think that would do much good,” Seymer remarked. “Given what we know of her…capabilities.”
“It is a shame we couldn’t get her on side,” Mortimer said, laughing slightly. “Though perhaps that is for the best…after all, Project LUCIFER is still something of a washout, isn’t it?”
“Be quiet,” Seymer barked.
“No, I don’t think I will,” Mortimer said. “None of you have noticed, have you?”
Slowly, all three turned.
Baird was laying, head down on the desk, his fingers scratching at the wood. His hair was ragged and matted, and he was gasping for air like a man with lungs full of water.
“Jesus Christ!” Regent shouted. “What the fuck is happening to him?”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” Mortimer asked. “Regent, I’m surprised. A military man like yourself should be accomplished in the field of battlefield analysis.”
“Figured what out?” Boateng asked, rising from her seat.
Mortimer smiled.
“It’s quite simple, really. You heard what the bitch on the television said about meme-complexes, whatever those are. But I got the gist. The Arsonist isn’t the one burning people. It’s us. All of us. And once I figured that out, I was able to understand how to burn.”
Seymer stood, removing his glasses. He stepped very slowly towards Mortimer.
“I’m warning you,” he said, glancing at the gasping Baird. “Release the Chancellor at once.”
Mortimer laughed. He raised his fingers in a motion to click them.
“Well, Gabriel. Perhaps a special demonstration is in order. On the count of three! One, two—”
Seymer threw a punch at Mortimer that connected hard with his right jaw.
Mortimer fell to the ground. Seymer leapt upon him, pinning him to the ground by his throat, cocking a fist back for another hit.
“Prime Minster!” Boateng shouted.
“Bastard,” Mortimer choked. There were tears in his eyes. “You hit me. How dare you hit me…”
“Stay down,” Seymer said. “Look at you, Barnabas. All your life, your sole source of motivation has been trying to destroy me. Whether it was dobbing me in to the older boys at school, trying to get me disqualified from exams, upstaging me at our graduation ceremony or trying to destroy my political career…and now here you are. Less than a worm.”
Mortimer, still winded and dazed from the hit, could only stare up at Seymer, who continued to berate him.
“Do you know why I let you keep that job, Mortimer? It was because every day I’ve had to see the seething hatred in your eyes, knowing that I achieved what you could not – the premiership of this nation – it has served as motivation for me. I’m removing you from the role not simply because I dislike you. I would have done that the moment I entered office if that were the case. No, Mortimer. I am removing you from office because you have shown that you cannot even do the job of standing in my shadow without screwing it up.”
Seymer relinquished his grip around Mortimer’s throat. “Now get up off your arse, you pathetic bastard. Nobody here burns tonight. And believe me, once this room comes out of lockdown…you’re gone.”
Mortimer looked at him hatefully, and, tears streaming down his cheeks and snot pouring from his nose, gripped his fat cheek and spoke no more.
Baird, released from Mortimer’s grip, was laying back against his chair, gasping.
“Thank you, Prime Minister,” he said.
All of them turned back to the screen now.
“My God,” Boateng said. “What’s he doing—”
All their mouths fell open.
All of them, that was, but Mortimer’s.
*
“What the hell is going on?” the Captain said.
“The show must go on, Captain,” the Arsonist said, leaping up on the stage. “Ladies and gentlemen of the press, I have promised you graphic footage tonight, and graphic footage is what you are about to receive! For, as we have established, we have a certain man here that the world could do without…”
The billionaire made sounds of protest, pulling against his bonds. There were yells from the crowd.
“My God!” a man shouted. “Do something! Shoot him!”
“We can’t shoot him,” the Captain said, defeated. “It won’t do anything.”
The Arsonist laughed.
“Don’t worry, Captain,” he said. “I’m sure your employers will no doubt be impressed with your fine work this evening. But now, I think it’s time for the grand finale.”
“Oh Jesus, I can’t look,” a woman said, turning away.
A hysterical man grabbed a policeman’s gun and fired a shot that whistled past the Arsonist’s head and into a wall.
The Arsonist, unperturbed, continued.
“I’m going to do a magic trick for you all,” he said. “Watch very closely.”
The crowd of assembled policemen, soldiers, SAID-MI5 officers and press could do nothing more than look, as much as they wanted not to.
“On the count of three,” the Arsonist said.
“One!”
The billionaire was crying through his gag.
The Arsonist raised his right hand in the air, pressing his thumb and middle finger together.
“Two!”
The billionaire was weeping uncontrollably, pulling away from his restraints.
The Arsonist brought the hand down to waist-level.
“Two and a half!”
The billionaire seemed to be steeling himself, wincing.
The Arsonist raised the hand forty-five degrees.
“Two and three quarters!”
The billionaire looked almost like Buddha-like in his acceptance of his fate.
The fingers dropped once again to waist height. The Arsonist grinned.
“Three…!”
There was a column of fire on the stage.
The billionaire watched in terror as the body that had once been Adrian Templeton cremated itself, shrieking with laughter as its skin was stripped to muscle, and muscle to bare bone. The burning body stepped off the stage, laughing and shrieking all the while, before collapsing in a heap of blackened bone-char. A shrunken skull rolled across the ground and came to rest at the Captain’s feet. It wore a pair of bent, melted sunglasses, and the image of the Virgin Mary in each lens had been desecrated.
He looked down at it, and then, drawing his weapon for the final time that night, uttered:
“I order all of you to disperse.”
The journalists took heed of the order immediately and ran for their lives.
“Untie that man,” the Captain ordered his men. “And for God’s sake, clean up those bones.”
Then he turned to Carlson.
“Carlson,” he said. “Are you alright?”
“Never better,” Carlson said. “What the fuck was all that about?”
“I doubt we will ever know,” the Captain said, a trace of anger in his stoic voice, for now it was undeniable – Pandora’s box had been opened; the forbidden fruit had been eaten. The people of the world had been made aware, in a way far more palpable than the Episode, that the world was far stranger than they had previously believed.
He looked down at the burned skull, and thought of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods.
The old ways were gone, now. The new normal was no normal.
No matter.
If normality would not will itself into being, then SAID-MI5 would force it to be so.
*
“He destroyed himself,” K-Os said, to a groggy-looking Liberty. “That’s what he told me he was going to do. He self-immolated on live television.”
“Destroyed himself?” Liberty said.
“We were wrong all along,” Socks mused. “We misread the whole thing as a taking-over-the-world scheme. But that wasn’t it at all.”
“The rebel memes came, created havoc for a while, and left by self-immolating. The moment of discorporation itself forever seared into human memory, itself becoming a meme.”
“They won’t have died,” Liberty said. “The ideas that made up that ego, or I suppose, ‘spirit’, have just gone back to the strings. The runoff from that should nourish them for some time.”
“Getting a telling-off from that lot that were in your head, I reckon,” Socks said. “What I don’t understand is why he’d go so public with it if he was just going to do that.”
“I think I understand,” K-Os said. “He wanted to send a message.”
“What’s that, then?”
K-Os looked out into the distance. It was a clear night, and the stars were twinkling in the sky.
“The meme-complex was based on an imprint of someone feeling their weakest and most powerless. Someone in such despair they could see no way out but death. I don’t approve of his actions, but I think I can see what he was doing. He was reminding people of their power, no matter what happens…nobody and nothing is permanent, and everything that seems permanent can be destroyed in a single night.”
“Well, I can see that working as a political statement,” Socks said. “But why burn a television personality?”
“I don’t think it was him,” K-Os said. “Remember, he was the transmitter, nothing more.”
“So you’re saying the people watching at home did that?”
“Power can always be misused, Socks. You and I should remember that.”
There was a brief moment of silence.
“Let’s head back,” K-Os said.
“My head hurts,” Liberty said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to fly.”
“I’m sure we can catch a train somewhere near here.”
Socks and Liberty stood, and K-Os gripped their hands.
The firefly rode for the final time that night.
*
The military lockdown over Whitehall had been formally stood down at midnight after the threat had been acceptably determined to have been neutralised, and the Prime Minister had been allowed – albeit with a military escort – to return to 10 Downing Street to get some rest.
Rest, however, was one thing he was not doing. The Deputy Prime Minister had returned to his home in Roehampton – as incumbent of a Cabinet role that existed only at the Prime Minister’s discretion, he was not permitted to live on Downing Street – and the Prime Minister was now going about having his ministerial powers removed and the whip formally withdrawn from him, effectively suspending him from government.
To have the soon-to-be-former Deputy Prime Minister actually ejected from government, however, required the Prime Minister to formally write to the reigning monarch. In a tradition dating all the way back to Charles I in the seventeenth century, the monarch was not usually expected to meddle in affairs of common governance, but her reserve powers, in an extreme situation such as this, allowed for a clean break, and a clean break was what was needed – a Cabinet minister simply could not assault another minister, much less try to kill him by anomalous means. It undermined everything that Britain had been fighting for since the Episode.
Reviewing the letter, the Prime Minister clicked a mouse button, then rose from his seat, walking over to a waiting laser printer, which instantly spat out the letter on a piece of paper with a 10 Downing Street letterhead. To send Her Majesty electronic mail on such an important matter would be quite an insult.
He folded the letter neatly at his desk, placing it into a beige government envelope, then used a rubber stamp for the address: Her Majesty the Queen, Buckingham Palace, Westminster, London, SW1A 1AA.
He set the envelope down. He would hand it to a member of staff later, so it could be delivered as soon as possible, but for now, he noticed that he could smell himself. He had not washed since before the lockdown began. The Prime Minister decided that he would wait to hand the envelope off before retiring to bed, electing to wash first.
He went to the bathroom – a regal room with brass fittings and a clawfoot tub that, it was said, had once been used by Sir Robert Walpole himself. The Prime Minister very much doubted that, but nevertheless, he undressed and stepped into it, turning the tap head until a stream of water came out. He felt with his hand until it was warm, then pulled a valve to redirect the water to a shower head, which he held in his hand, rinsing himself over with the water.
Late at night, or early morning, in the shower, naked, gave the Prime Minister unpleasant cause to reflect on his life, his successes and his shortcomings. He was proud of his political career, having risen through the ranks after graduating from Oxford with a First in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and yet, he regretted, now he was entering middle age, that he had never once taken up with a partner. The opportunities had presented themselves in his youth, but he had always been – or thought himself – too busy. Now it just felt like too little and too late. It would have been nice, he thought, to have had a partner, to start a family. But alas, he lived alone at 10 Downing Street – the first Prime Minister to be unmarried, indeed, since Edward Heath.
The Prime Minister grabbed a bar of soap (manufactured by Royal Warrant of Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen), lathered up and began to scrub himself down.
He wondered if other Prime Ministers ever had these private doubts. Stupid thing to wonder, really. Of course they did. Weren’t all Prime Ministers nervous wrecks, deep down? But that was the trick of it, you had to feign confidence, to pretend that you knew what you were doing, even though you were as bewildered by this world of sound and light as any infant child. People clung to your word, trusted in your expertise. They had to – that was, after all, what the State was for, to act as a mediator between people, to give them some higher power in which to trust. Not unlike God, in a way.
The Prime Minister rinsed his head with the water, wetting his hair, and then his shoulder, and then something strange happened.
The water sputtered out.
10 Downing Street was, of course, a very old building – approaching three-hundred-and-fifty years old, in fact, and it had been rebuilt a couple of times. It was unsurprising that the bloody plumbing didn’t work properly, and indeed, a few times since he had moved in, he had lost access to running water, usually restored within the hour. It was quite annoying, however, to be naked and cold and only part way through a shower when he’d need to tell a member of staff to send for a plumber.
Sighing, he prepared to climb out of the deep-walled tub.
There came a sound through the pipes of gurgling liquid.
Must have been a temporary outage, the Prime Minister thought, as he felt the hose-line kink with pressurised liquid on its way up to the showerhead—
Blood.
The showerhead was—
The showerhead was spraying blood—
Momentarily, the Prime Minister assumed that it was rusty water, but there was a characteristic, musty smell, like pennies, a salty, putrid smell that signified only that the showerhead was spraying fresh, warm blood.
In the next moment, the Prime Minister cried out in fear, dropping the soap, and in the moment after that, attempting to right himself, the Prime Minister slipped, cracking his head against the side of the bath.
The showerhead fell down the side of the bath, and sprayed its foul issue on the tiled floor, creating a puddle beneath the clawfeet. The Prime Minister remained somewhat conscious. He pulled himself from the tub at least halfway, his naked body prostrated over the edge of the bath, and then realised that he was far too injured to keep moving.
A figure entered the bathroom, then, and the Prime Minister thought that someone must have heard his cry. The figure crouched to meet his eyeline.
“My God,” the Prime Minister said, in a thin, quiet voice. “What are you doing here—”
*
“—BBC News, and if you’re just joining us, we have some very sad news this morning – the Prime Minister, Gabriel Seymer, has died suddenly at the age of forty-seven. Seymer, who was appointed Prime Minister after his predecessor’s resignation in the wake of the Episode in the spring, had been—”
“—ITV News, I’m John Turner. The Prime Minister, Gabriel Seymer, has died at the age of forty-seven. Mr. Seymer was found this morning by staff, having suffered an apparent fall in his residence at 10 Downing Street. Ambulances were called, but he was pronounced dead—”
“—I’m Tiffany Houston for CNN. The British Prime Minister, Gabriel Seymer, was found dead earlier today at the Prime Minister’s residence in Downing Street. The Prime Minister apparently fell in the shower and broke his neck. British police say they do not believe the death is suspicious—”
Another time, another place…
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ARC THREE: NEW CULTURE
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